Thursday, May 22, 2008

Perspective:What does it say about the current state of Action films when I can find far more entertaining results, online and for free? Don’t get me wrong; I may be a cheapskate but I will pay for something when it is quality. Maybe it’s something within our society, where fast food and short attention spans are the order of the day. It carries over into our entertainment as well. As long as it’s fast and easy to digest, who cares if it’s actually good or not (wait a minute…Arby’s isn’t easy to digest)? And yet, I end up defending a film that has two people screwing each other on an exercise apparatus. Strange how things work, huh?

The Plot, as it was:Chen Wei Man stars as Wang Lee, a newly crowned boxing champion with more popularity and women than he knows what to do with. He’s in high demand from a businessman, who hires Wang for the purpose of retrieving a valuable necklace that has been floating about since WWII. The necklace is in the possession of some guy named Jimmy, who is also pursued by more lowlifes looking for said necklace. The film also manages to fit in exploding & disappearing ninjas, hand-standing pool players, undersexed Asian women, mud wrestling and more drama than a telenovela. And lots of shower masturbation. And no, I’m not kidding.

Don’t shoot me…I’m only the reviewer!:After viewing City Ninja, I swore to myself that I must have been lobotomized shortly before the start of it. I say this because I thought to myself “There’s no way in hell I could enjoy a movie this lame brained!” My only palpable defense is that this was Guilty Pleasure City all the way. It’s just so cheerfully convoluted and over the top in every way possible that it would be a waste of time to bash it for all of its faults (which are many). The acting, dubbing & editing are all atrocious and the plot stops making sense pretty much after 30 seconds of running time, yet everything’s forgiven with a healthy dose of Kung Fu action and wacky sex. It’s nowhere close to high art and yet, that’s where the charm lies. The flick basically scores on the formula mapping of fight scene-->sex scene-->repeat and there’s no try at being any more epic than that. The two heroes are pretty much interchangeable as far as looks are concerned, which leads to much confusion as to whether you’re watching Wang or Jimmy kick some ass. Frankly, it didn’t matter to me because trying to actually follow the movie would be a mistake. Just sit back, watch some ninjas disappear, some baddies get messed up and a boxing ring be used for anything but. It’s a City Ninja world and we’re all just watching it for free!

Body Count/Violence: 26. The fight scenes are pretty fun and everything’s thrown in at a good clip. We get some bloody shooting near the end, plenty of kung fu fighting, strangling, impaling, billiard ball throwing, pipe thrashing, car mayhem, stabbing, sword slashing, neck breaking and ninja combustion. This may also be the only film I’ve seen where a bad guy is force fed a billiard ball. Seriously, how can you hate on shit like this?

Sexuality/Nudity: If there’s any area City Ninja excels at (and trust me, there aren’t many), it’s in this department. There’s an amazing amount of softcore action within the film, with an equally impressive variety. There are no less than FOUR scenes of female masturbation and three of them take place in the shower! Along with some grinding in a locker room shower, female nudity from all vantages, skimpy lingerie and mud wrestling, we get perhaps the most ludicrous love scene to ever be put on celluloid (and that’s not in a porno). In it, Wang and his honey start screwing in the middle of the boxing ring, then fully nude against a corner post and (best of all) on a rowing exercise machine! Though the movie can be seen here for free, you can’t argue that you don’t get your money’s worth in the gratuitous nudity/sex area.

Language/Dialogue: Just some mild stuff here and there.

How bad was it?:Not much on the critical front but what I read puts this film in camp classic territory. Actually, the rowing machine puts it in camp classic territory…the reviewers just reiterate that fact.

Did it make the studio’s day?:Distributed by First Films and made in Hong Kong, City Ninja was released in HK on 1/18/85. It grossed $2.2 million in its lone week at the HK cinema and can be seen on DVD in the 50 Movie Pack Martial Arts Collection that I have mentioned previously.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Perspective:
This would be the third of the four Sister Street Fighter films, as I caught it the other night on FliX (a pretty good source for some occasional 70s Kung Fu fare). This ISN’T the one I referenced in my original review of SSF however, as that plot is far more wacky than this one. Go on, go to IMDB and check it out. I can wait. Done? Ok, I guess some things just easily amuse me more than others.

The Plot, as it was:
Sue Shiomi portrays Koryu, a woman that has to find a little girl’s mother. The woman, named Shurei (Akane Kawasaki), is not only the mistress of wheelchair bound gangster Oh Ryu Mei (Rinichi Yamamoto) but also the chemist that combines gold into acid for his smuggling ring! Oh doesn’t take very well to the fact that Koryu is mucking up his operation so he gathers a gaggle of assassins to handle her, comprised by such entities as a blackface, Japanese/Zulu warrior (!), a cocky manipulator named Takeshi (Yasuaki Kurata) and the flamboyantly dressed Ebikura (Masashi Ishibashi).

Don’t shoot me…I’m only the reviewer!:
As long as you don’t go shooting for originality, RotSSF is a fun 77 minutes that wastes no time in giving you your grindhouse fix for the day. Obviously, the seemingly essential film elements (plot, characterization, dialogue, etc.) are in short supply but that leaves more time for the crazy fight scenes and campy fun that made the first one a fun trip. Shiomi is her usual stoic (maybe too stoic, at times) self and makes for one great physical show. Yamamoto is the latest in a long line of Han-inspired villains, complete with workable hand in a fixed, power position! The other bad guys are amusing as well (Ishibashi looks like a cross between a pimp and a Dancing with the Stars extra) and the film’s only real problem is it’s similarity to the first entry. Just a quick hint: they’re all pretty much the same film, albeit with a few changes (Koryu’s just finding a woman instead of a man this time and there’s a cloyingly, cute girl added in). Get past that and you’ll be treated to a perfectly passable timewaster that’s just slightly longer than one of David Caruso’s exasperated opening monotones on CSI:Miami. “Gold with Acid? That’s certainly (takes off glasses)…one interesting trip.” YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Body Count/Violence: 19. Much like SSF, Shiomi doesn’t go for her opponents’ jugular too much. She hits plenty of punches and spinkicks but they only prove to be consistently fatal during the final 10 minutes or so. We’re treated to the requisite shooting, stabbing, sword slashing, flogging, burning (both by fire and acid), bone breaking and so on and so on.

Sexuality/Nudity: Two topless scenes in this one, one in a strip club and another in which Oh works over Shurei’s chest with a feather. It sounds sexy but it’s much creepier when an old guy in a wheelchair with a prosthetic hand is doing it.

Language/Dialogue: Not much, just a few mild obscenities.

How bad was it?:
There’s a little debate amongst the reviews I read as to how this ranks as a sequel. Some have it a step behind the second film (Sister Street Fighter: Hanging by a Thread), while others have it as the best of the three follow ups. Regardless, its still looked at as cheesy fun and doesn’t clearly overflow with praise.

Did it make the studio’s day?:
Not sure. Toei Tokyo (producer of all of the Street Fighters, regular and Sister alike) released it in Japan in 1975 and that’s pretty much that. No box office or budget is known and there is no American theatrical release to speak of.

Perspective:It had to happen this way, eh? I take a sabbatical from writing these and when I come back, the first link I click is for a goddamn Godfrey Ho “film”! That’s like the whole thing about being told not to touch the stove when it’s hot. You just know you’re going to get burned but….bloody hell! Free movie sites, ladies and germs….a gift and a curse.

The Plot, as it was:Nancy Chang plays Rose, a woman that is beaten and raped during a camping trip. She decides to go all Paula Kersey on each of the rapists, infiltrating the diamond syndicate they are apart of. That conflicts with her Interpol agent husband George (Jack Lam), who is going after said syndicate as well. Oh, and there’s also a twin sister, Richard Harrison (Ninja Dragon) talking on a Garfield phone (no shit, really), George in a Lionel Ritchie jacket and a bunch of ninjas. We know this because it says “ninja” on their headbands. The crack rock was really being passed about here, folks!

Don’t shoot me…I’m only the reviewer!:And I thought Ninja Dragon was dumb! Leave it to Godfrey Ho, master of the “recycled ninja” film genre to top the previous film of his I reviewed for sheer idiocy. There’s no plot to speak of; instead, it’s a series of contrivances and ninja battles that are connected together by the loosest of threads. As with Dragon (and about every other work in Ho’s career), this is because Ho pieces together scenes from unfinished products with random ninja duels in an attempt to resemble a coherent film. This practice is about as successful as ESPN being able to not talk about the New York Yankees for more than five minutes. I’m sure the braintrust felt that adding the diamond smuggling subplot would make the flick more epic but it honestly would have been better as a straight revenge pic. How much better it would have been is certainly arguable but I imagine it wouldn’t have been by much. Sadly, the action isn’t real plentiful and even the surefire, campy ninja duels lack that certain campy charm. Along with some grand continuity errors (watch a woman’s top get ripped off, only to see her escape with a different top on…one that I assume she carries in her purse for occasions such as that) and more plot holes to shake a staff at, Ninja Champion is a sometimes unpleasant, sometimes (unintentionally) hilarious and always confounding work of dumbassery. Did I mention Richard Harrison shows up for all of 30 seconds, while talking on a fucking GARFIELD PHONE?!? Oh well, he wasn’t the only one “phoning it in” here. BAH-ZING!

Body Count/Violence: 17. More baddies are beaten up than killed here, which is a bit disheartening. There are the usual kung fu fights as well as some shooting, stabbing, whipping, drowning, choking, severing of hands, etc. The death is more generic this time around, which is not a good thing for a film this bad.

Sexuality/Nudity: There are a few smatterings of gratuitous nudity here, as Chang provides at least one memorable glimpse of her chest (which leads to an equally memorable death). Along with getting her top yanked off (though she’s wearing a bra), there are a few other sexual scenes that imply more than they show. There’s also a brief shot of a guy’s backside during an attempted removing of his manhood (whew!).

Language/Dialogue: Mild but not overly strong.

How bad was it?:If you have reviewed this film (trust me; leave it to the professionals...or me), you either deem it as “so bad, it’s good” or “this just sucks”. More seem to head toward the latter.

Did it make the studio’s day?:Ninja Champion was released through IFD Films & Arts Ltd. (dig the Asian version of the Columbia Pictures torchbearer!) in Hong Kong sometime in 1985. You can most likely find it (if you’re that gluttonous for punishment) on the Martial Arts Collection 50 movie pack, which includes many other titles I’ve reviewed.